Free Republic

Tens of thousands marched on Washington last Saturday to protest George Bush's war in Iraq. The crowd included college-age activists, veterans of Vietnam War protests, entire families united against the war, and parents whose children have been killed in Iraq. It was the largest protest yet against this war. Larger ones will almost surely follow. If there had been a soundtrack to Saturday's march past the White House, you couldn't pick a much more appropriate song to kick it off than Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers." Released in 1969 by one of the most politically acute bands of the era, "Volunteers" was...

The American left may like to reprise Vietnam, but they're badly wrong, writes Michael Gawenda. THE New York Times columnist Frank Rich is the voice of America's late middle-aged baby boomers for whom opposition to the Vietnam War became the prism through which they would subsequently judge US foreign policy. Rich, who was once the most feared theatre critic in America when he was initially on the Times, able to close a Broadway show with a lukewarm review, is now back at the paper writing a weekly column that has become a rallying call for opponents of the war in...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: (Story) "A Republican congressman has called for a deadline to pull US troops from Iraq, while other members of President George Bush's party urged his administration to revamp Iraq policy. Republican Walter Jones, a North Carolina conservative, said on ABC's This Week that he would offer legislation this week setting a timetable for the US withdrawal from Iraq. 'I voted for the resolution to commit the troops, and I feel that we've done about as much as we can do,' said Jones, who coined the phrase 'freedom fries' to lash out at the French for opposing...

We agreed on everything except one small point: he was certain that all Republicans were racist. His certainty illustrates everything that is broken between red and blue America. And the certainty of his death demonstrates how that brokenness will be repaired. My co-worker was a black Baby Boomer, who grew to manhood in the heyday of the civil rights movement. His opinions on crime, welfare, divorce, homosexuality, religion, and foreign policy would put him on the conservative wing of the Republican Party. But, as a young man in the sixties, he became convinced that all Republicans were racists. No amount...

This year's campaign for governor offers Missouri voters a distinct choice. From style and personality to age, experience and gender, Matt Blunt and Claire McCaskill offer significantly different alternatives for the state's next chief executive. Blunt, 33, is the epitome of the Generation X Republican. His meteoric rise through the party ranks has been fueled by a steadfast opposition to taxes, a strong military record, an appeal to traditional values and a well-connected family name. McCaskill, 51, is a classic baby-boomer Democrat, a lawyer who came of age in the heyday of the women's movement. She climbed the political ladder,...

Days are numbered for 6 o'clock news... Try as I may, I am unable to conjure up a single shred of nostalgia for the once-fabled network evening news programs. Walter Cronkite is a name to me, not a symbol of reassurance or stability. Edward R. Murrow is a historical figure. As for the hallowed idea of "the six o'clock news," it means nothing: In my adult life, I've never had time to watch the daily news at 6 or 6:30, at least not with any regularity. When I watch television at all, I switch without any particular loyalty from CNN...

Whoa! What's happening? Why are people turning on us? We're the Baby Boomers, you know. The Mighty Boomers. We invented everything from money to music to sex, did we not? Nothing good ever happened until we came along. Now people are turning on us. We Baby Boomers are being made to feel . . . guilty. Ridiculous, isn't it? People have tried to make us feel guilty before. They said we consumed too much. Or we were too shallow. Or we only thought about ourselves. Excuuuuse me. Who should we think about? Somebody else? All that was just jealousy. Even...

Protest, even more than property, is a sacred resource of American society. It begins with radical minorities at the margins, eventually marching into the mainstream, where their views become the majority sentiment. Prophetic minorities instigated the American Revolution, ended slavery, achieved the vote for women, made trade unions possible, and saved our rivers from becoming sewers. Protest by its nature challenges authority. It cannot be managed or commodified without losing its essence. Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

Crows' feet, graying temples, bifocals, a bad ticker and those blankety-blank AARP publications in the mailbox every other day are all reminders that I'm a Baby Boomer whose protest-crazy generation is now more concerned with the price of prescription drugs than the cost of war. But, in this very political year, I'm also observing a political change. Either I'm not as liberal as I used to be or there is a new definition of liberalism. Winston Churchill used to say that any man who is under 30 and is not a liberal has no heart; and any man who is...

A summer night of love for protest songs of the Sixties They came from the 1960s. Most were in their sixties. But the crowd listening to Crosby, Stills & Nash in Bethlehem, PA did cross generations, and even the youngsters were singing the tunes that gave a bittersweet taste to those years seemingly long ago. The band, however, brought them to the stage at MusikFest's RiverPlace Tuesday night. With a vengeance. They opened with "Carry On," and on a sour note to boot. Oh lordy, if this was the sound they were going to offer all night long, this was...

SOMETIME while Hillary Clinton was switching her name from Hillary Rodham to Hillary Clinton and back again and back back again, an important threshold was crossed — people stopped caring. When Hillary initially kept her surname after marrying Bill, it was a blow against the patriarchy and for women’s liberation, but today such surname-keeping has lost its cachet. In the 1990s the number of women keeping their maiden name upon marriage began to dip, according to a fascinating study published in The Journal of Economic Perspectives. This snapback to taking a husband’s surname is mostly an elite phenomenon, since among...

A generation ago, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, young people in America turned out by the thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands, to protest the U.S. war in Vietnam. Today the Iraq war is just as hotly debated in the United States, but there are few street protests, and those few are not well attended. Last week, U.S. President George W. Bush traveled to the southern state of Louisiana to deliver the commencement address for Louisiana State University, and urged the new graduates to use their educations wisely. "Our country depends on business people who are honest in...

'Tell him his mom is here' Some may think Susan Galleymore went to great lengths to check on the condition of her son and the war in Iraq. She doesn't. By BILL DURYEA, Times Staff Writer Published May 9, 2004 Like a lot of parents, Susan Galleymore was nervous when her son, Nick, a 26-year-old Army Ranger with the 82nd Airborne, was sent to Iraq. Unlike most parents, she assuaged her anxiety by going to Iraq to visit him. After the 10-day trip, Galleymore, 48, created a Web site (www.motherspeak.org) where she has recorded interviews with Iraqis and with other...